


Of cologne, alcohol and why the hell aren't you wearing a suit today

by IAmNotOneOfThem



Series: Blonde hair, muscles, scars, and I've been told he has blue eyes [1]
Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: An oneshot which turned out to be longer than I thought, Face-blindness, M/M, Prosopagnosia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-15
Updated: 2013-01-15
Packaged: 2017-11-25 15:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/640455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmNotOneOfThem/pseuds/IAmNotOneOfThem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He recognised Eve by her hair, and by her skin, the way she radiated warmth and mostly smelled of cupcakes when she came down to Q-branch. He knew M by the way he walked, and he had known the old M by her body posture. Bond smelled of cologne, the faint scent of alcohol, and he always wore suits.</p><p>Faces, Q thought, were nothing but a social convention, and he could very well survive without them, thank you.</p><p>  <i>(Or in which Q suffers from Prosopagnosia, but he doesn't really suffer because of it)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Of cologne, alcohol and why the hell aren't you wearing a suit today

**Author's Note:**

> _not beta-read yet_

For the first few years of his life, Q hadn't noticed that something was wrong with him, and neither have his parents. Apart from the weirdness of having a son who didn't speak until he was three and a half years old _(three years, five months and a day, Q would correct, but no one listened to him anyway)_.

He had never been particularily fond of being forced out in public and amongst people, and after the third attempt of his parents which had ended in crying, screaming and Q hiding underneath the table for the full seven hours of the birthday party he had politely been invited to, they had given in eventually and just bought him new books instead.

The problem, if it even could be labelled as such, was that there wasn't any.

His parents kept on trying to find one from the moment he had first refused to talk though he could have, and after a painful process of working their way through every single psychologist in the area, they had - once again - given up and bought him new books.

Books, Q thought, were something beautiful, and something he easily could understand. He spent his time reading and spent his time copying important parts of the book on his notebook, started to dig deeper and deeper and had once even written a letter to the author asking several things and pointing out mistakes in logic and plot, but he had not once got an answer, and his parents told him that _you don't just do such a thing, that's rude_.

Q had never experienced the emotion people described as shame, because in his world, he was the one being right and everyone else was wrong, but he swallowed every single one of his comments and simply kept on reading.

His choice of hobby, and refusal to participate in social interaction possibly was to blame for the late discovery of what his parents later would call _The problem_.

Just like every other gifted child, Q had been sent to school earlier than the average child, and if not his parents would have found a way to get rid off him he assumed

His new school was in West Yorkshire, a school which was _one of the first 100 National Teaching Schools and a Regional Centre for Gifted and Talented provision_ , holding several awards and was called St James' Ce Primary Academy. Q's parents held high hopes in this school, while Q just wanted to turn around, leave and never come back again.

The principe of social interaction were clear to Q, but he felt no desire nor the social constraint to participate in any.

Social, adjective. _Denoting or relating to human society or any of its subdivisions; of, relating to, or characteristic of the experience, behaviour, and interaction of persons forming groups._

Interaction, noun. _A process by which two or more things affect each other._

Q did not relate to human society to a degree his parents did. His mother went out often to help keep the park clean and gave homeless people on the street something to eat instead of money, and Q's father was part of the city's council.

It soon became clear that he wasn't made to participate in this kind of activities, and that this environment was anything but good for his development.

It also was discovered that he seemed to have some kind of problem, but it was not yet clear what it was.

One of the first activities they did in their class was describing another person, after talking to them for a while to get to know them, and then introducing the person to the rest of the class. Q talked to a girl with brown hair and a purple dress, smelling of something sweet and with a strange accent.

As it was time to introduce her, he said that she had brown hair, wore a purple dress, smelled of something sweet and had a strange accent, liked music and had a doll named Claire.

The teacher asked him to tell more about her, what her face looked like, but he couldn't. He had just sat there staring blankly at the teacher with the blonde hair and the skirt, and realised that he had no idea what she was talking about - a feeling he had never felt before, and which had left him in a state of numbness and confusion.

Sarah, how the girl was called, said she had green eyes, dimples and wore glasses like Q did, and Q could see it as he turned to look at her, but the moment he looked at the teacher again, it was gone.

Had she green eyes, or blue? Or brown? Or maybe another, strange and weird colour based on a genetic dysfunction, and therefore something unique? Did she wear glasses or not?

Being as young as he was, Q didn't pay much attention to it, but his teacher told his parents who - content to have found something to analyse and _cure_ \- made him go to a doctor, but said found nothing. They said it was common for gifted children to have quirks, and that was it.

From then on, the teacher introduced herself to Q over and over again, though he could tell it was her because she was the only teacher wearing skirts and a necklace around her throat, and she was the only one who smelled of honey, and her voice was a bit too deep for a woman.

Her name was Mary McAndersons, and he remembered that name even years after leaving school to be home-schooled, years after struggling to find his place in the class and a corner to sulk in as the other children realised that he couldn't tell the teacher who bullied him, because he couldn't see their faces, and they switched clothes.

At the age of nine - _nine years, five months, two weeks and four days, Q mentally corrected_ \- his parents realised that they had done a mistake, and took him off the school.

They got a divorce soon after Q's father cheated on her with a woman - which Q had found out, because there had been a woman with another way of walking, another rhythm, and he had asked father at dinner who she had been, mother had started to scream and father too, and he had blamed Q so he had taken away all his books - and Q moved to his mother.

Being given money by father, she could afford hiring teachers for him. Mister Wright had an Irish accent, wore suits and had black hair, Miss Meyer always wore a dress and a coat, and Mister Melville always wore a cardigan, had glasses hanging around his neck and had a limp.

Q liked him, because he taught Mathematic, Art and allowed Q to get onto his laptop when he finished exercises earlier than calculated. Q's obsession with books quickly faded, and was replaced by an obsession with computers, one Mister Melville happily indulged into because he was working as an IT specialist too.

He asked his mother to buy him cardigans after Mister Melville died because of a stroke, and asked for a computer and the password to their Wifi.

He knew his mother by the way she held herself, straight, like a ballet dancer, and the way she always had her hair open, curly and brown like Q's own, not as messy though, and the way she always had her phone in her hands. His father was a man in a suit, like so many others, so Q memorised the way he walked, like the soldier he had never been and he smelled of cigarettes.

xx

As Q turned sixteen, he moved out and went to college after being given an invitation by five ones all over the UK, and he studied IT, math and computer science. He didn't bother memorising how his teacher looked like or the other people in the lectures, it was enough to know in which lecture hall the lecture was held and where he had to go to, and that there was an internet page where he could see if the hall number was another one, or if the lecture wasn't held at all.

Q's room mate was a young man with dyed, green hair, and earphones always plugged into his ears. Q liked him. They didn't talk much besides the occasional _did you hack into my computer and do my homework?_ and warnings if one - not Q - would be coming back from a party late in the night, and Q preferred it that way.

It was also David who was the first man Q fell for, and the one to take Q's virginity in a dark, unorganised room in the middle of a lecture David had made Q skip, on top of Q's bed.

He whispered sweet, so incredibly sweet lies into Q's ear as he fucked him hard and desperate, leaving bruises all over the younger man's skin. Q had never felt this level of happiness before, but the day he learnt flying, he felt how it was to fall, and collide with the ground.

A bit ironic, considering how he had developed a fear of flying a few years earlier after visiting a school in France for a special lecture.

The next day, David showed up with a young lady and asked Q if he could maybe study in the library for the time she was in their room, and Q only nodded and got out as calmly as he could.

He deleted the information about David's appearance out of his mind: His currently blue hair, the way he carried earphones around all the time with music Q had never heard before, but liked immediately. His far too big shirts and the randomly placed cuts in the fabric, and the scent of cigarettes lingering on his skin. His deep, rumbling voice, his Scottish accent and his beautiful laughing.

Q deleted it all, and the next day, he re-introduced himself to David, because he didn't recognise him.

David moved out soon after, and Q's new roommate was moving in. Jack, American, noisy and just as chaotic in his way of living as Q. They managed, and as a friend of Jack flirted with Q, he ignored him for the sake of finishing his papers for three months in advance.

Jack was replaced by Michael soon after he found out that Q was a _freak_.

Michael tried to be understanding and told Q his name over and over again, being the psychology student he was, but he too left soon enough and from then on, Q was alone.

It stayed that way until Q left college before he could finish his doctorate dissertation, being too bored and not being able to stand this many people, their faces and society's pressure on knowing each and every single person who came to talk to him too much.

It also was incredibly annoying that his inability to memorise faces was considered as something to talk about, soon enough a psychology student had dropped by to _ask him a few questions about his disability and how it affected him_.

She had blonde hair, and wore a man's shirt, but he couldn't remember how she had talked or smelled, he only remembered that she wore a strong cologne, made for men. He had answered the first three questions, but as she asked him how it felt to be a pariah of society and knowing that he practically was incapable of forming a functioning relationship, he asked her to leave and went to hack a server.

It turned out to be MI6's server, and a few days later, as he had settled down in his tiny new flat in downtown London, two agents knocked on his door, and he found himself being confronted with two faceless men.

Faceless, in his definition, wasn't the same as for everyone else. He grew up forgetting the face of a person the moment he turned away or was distracted enough to not see the face in his focus, by now he was used to it.

Being faceless meant that he couldn't try and memorise anything. Both wore suits, black, black tie, white shirt, and black shoes, both had earpieces in their ears, both smelled of nothing but the usual human scent and both were tall, broad and muscular.

They asked him to accompany them, and since he had nothing to hide but four laptops and his access to every single network in the whole world, he got along, trying to see _something_ which would allow him to tell the difference between the two men, but he couldn't.

For practically the first time in his life, he felt affected by his illness, and it worried him. There was nothing, nothing, and the more he tried to find something, the more distracted he got, to the point he didn't notice that they were in front of the HQ and the car standing still.

There was a woman who wanted to talk to him, and Q sighed in relief as he could immediately memorise several things about her. Grey, short hair, straight posture, radiating with a coldness she showed in her voice. She called herself M, and she talked to Q about how they had nearly not caught him, but he had made a mistake and that they could either punish him, lock him into a cell or offer him a job.

Naturally, he agreed to the third, shook her hand and asked if all agents were as indecipherable as the two having taken him here.

"Did one of them have a scar across his whole face?", she asked him, and as he said nothing, she only nodded, "It is their job to. But you will be able to tell the difference between them soon enough, give yourself some time."

He shook her hand, and turned to leave, but then stopped and turned to her again.

She had grey eyes, he noted, but he would forget it again the moment he would turn around and not see her.

"Will it be a problem?"

"I'd say no, but there is no constant in espionage."

M sometimes smelled of tea, sometimes of ink and freshly printed paper. Her high heels made no noise like someone else's did, but there was something in her gait that he recognised. Most days, she wore grey, sometimes black, and her clothes were practical, comfortable and tailored.

She was visible amongst all those suited, broad faceless agents, and he found himself liking her.

His name was taken out off the civilian's list, just like his file, and as he stared at his own face, he felt like looking at a stranger. He put as many security precautions as possible on it, more than M had on hers, and never looked at it again.

Working under Q was fun, and he enjoyed it. He was a practical, intelligent man with the quirk of playing with his glasses all the time. He ran around in a lab coat, wore a jumper underneath it, smelled of chemicals and gunpowder, and allowed Q to sit at his computer in the office instead of where everyone else was, simply to allow the younger man not to have to try and memorise **all** obvious traits of the other minions.

There only were two he knew, and one's name as Claire and the other's John. Claire because she always brought him tea though he had never asked her to nor ever mentioned that he drank it instead of coffee, and John because he always got into arguments with him about the best way to code a program.

As the explosion happened and the old Q died, M came to Q as he sat outside with the others, a shock blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a cup of tea in his hands.

"Q, you are needed in your branch", she simply said, and Q's new life had began.

xx

Eve, who brought him a cupcake after he had protected her e-mail account against attempts of old boyfriends to contact her, was the first woman he enjoyed talking to, because she was the only one not trying to flirt with him constantly.

He recognised her by her hair, and her skin which was darker than everyone else's on his level of security and than those of the people he talked to on a regular basis. She always wore high heels which gave a clicking noise different than other shoes' and always a skirt to a top or a dress. Her scent reminded him of the old library of his college, of ink and something he couldn't put a finger on, and when she came town to Q-branch to bring him something to eat, she smelled of cupcakes.

Q liked her, and after a while he was able to tell when she came down by the way she walked. The rhythm, the pauses between each _click_ on the ground, and her pace.

His minions soon found out about his problem, and by the age of twenty-five he finally was told what it was.

Before, he had never bothered going to a doctor, because why should he have? He hated being judged and therefore had seen no reason to go and let a doctor poke at his brain and mind.

As John stepped to his desk with a printed paper, the word **Prosopagnosia** at the top of it, he figured it was time to face it.

Prosopagnosia, noun. Otherwise known as face-blindness.

He read the article, thanked John and went back to work. It was nothing surprising and nothing new, a fact he accepted and that was it.

He felt John's glance laying on him all day, and two days later, he fucked Q as no one else was in the office, bent over the desk.

The next day, Q tried to understand the way John acted around him, and figured out he wanted to be threated better than the rest.

He was fired two months later, as he tried to copy data he wasn't supposed to have access to.

Someone tried to pity him, but Q ignored them for the sake of his work, there were better things to do.

Shortly after the explosion costing several lives, so many faces he never saw, and so many of his colleagues, burnt to ashes and killed by fire, he met James Bond.

He expected another faceless agent with a suit and without a face to read, but he was surprised as instead, he found himself sitting next to an agent with character traits as unique as his deep, rich voice.

Bond wore a suit, but it was different from the typical agent's. It was grey, and tailored, the jacket probably worth more than anything Q owned. He had short, blonde hair, was muscular, tall and had a broad chest. He held himself casual, like an Alpha male owning the place, taking in everything without doing something. He radiated smugness and intelligence, something entirely new for Q concerning agents, especially double-ohs, and he smelled of a strong, masculine cologne, a bit of alcohol too - lingering, faint, but not drunk - and something Q couldn't name, but it was unique too and he memorised it.

Bond's voice was deep, vibrating in Q's mind and echoing even as he already was in the cab again, on his way back to the HQ.

Q was busy working from then on, but now and then he monitored Bond, and he sent Eve to him instead of going on his own, because there was no way in hell that he would go and use a plane.

Silva happened, Q realised that it was just another falling-day, and he fell from high above the clouds, collided with the ground and broke his neck.

Silva left the field victoriously, and Q was to pick up the pieces of his _empire_ with minions wondering if he was capable of doing the job, of being in such a high position, and he knew they blamed it on his condition, but it was nothing and he was fine.

Bond had been able to get on the train, the time it had taken Q to realise it was Silva wasn't the reason for the security breach, and not the reason for the skull haunting his dreams.

Shortly after Skyfall, how some higher-up in the bureaus called the events around M's death, Silva's victory over the whole MI6 and Q's failure, Bond started to visit Q-branch more frequently.

 _I am bored_ , he said with this charming grin of his, _I won't do any harm._

Except for that he did, of course he did, it was Bond. He annoyed Q's minions, scared one away for longer than a week, and sat at the edge of Q's desk like he owned it.

He stopped smelling like alcohol, and wore a new cologne, but Q recognised its earthy scent and it was fine. Bond kept on wearing his suits, and Q kept on reminding himself of how blue the agent's eyes were until it was out of his mind, faded in the blackness of being blind in a special way.

It was a wonderful blue, Q thought as he caught himself staring at Bond's face for the fourth time that day, Bond sipping at Q's tea and Q didn't mind it, being far too distracted.

"You are staring at me, Q", Bond stated after a while, a smile spreading out across his face, full of wrinkles and scars, and Q wanted to embrace it, _paint it down and draw it until he would be able to memorise it, but he would never_ , "Is there a particular reason or are you just lost in your gigantic brain?"

"I'm memorising your eyes."

Bond blinked, taken aback, and Q wondered if he had never read his file or been informed about it.

"Why would you do that? You are privileged to see me on a daily basis, by now you should have been capable of doing so."

Q blinked, turned to his laptop _and it was gone._

Blue? Green? Dull, bright, sparkling, tiny, big, wide, wrinkles, scars, smooth skin, rough skin, hard profile, round face, _IwanttoknowitbutIcan'tandithurts_.

He said nothing, and Bond took the silence as an order to leave.

Claire brought him tea.

It had a teaspoon of sugar and honey in it, and he thanked her, looked into her brown eyes only to forget them again.

xx

Falling for someone whose face you didn't remember was not as hard as people imagined it to be.

When he lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling, Q did not think of faces. He remembered voices, accents, intonations, single words or a whole dialogue, he remembered scents, and touches lingering, still hot and fresh on his skin. Q remembered clothes, and he remembered noises like laugher and chuckles, each intake of breath, each inhalation and exhalation.

He wasn't bothered by the fact that he didn't remember faces, he had never been.

No, he wasn't bothered. It was his life, it was a fact and he would be damned if he would allow an agent with apparently unique eyes to pull him down into desperation and depression..

( _This night, he dreamt of blonde hair, and a suit, and of scars, bruises, wounds, everything telling another story in the life of a single man._

_He dreamt of charming words, whispered into the night, and as he stroked himself and climaxed with a moan, it was the name James which made his lips curl into a smile, and it was the name James he repeated over and over again like a mantra as he lay there, wondering if Bond was alright in India, and if he would come back so Q could try it again._

_Maybe one day, he would be able to remember James' face, and maybe one day he would remember of Bond's eyes were blue, green, brown or grey, or if they had some unique colour because of a genetic dysfunction._ )

Bond returned three weeks later, and as Q turned around after hearing footsteps, he stared at a stranger and had no idea who it was.

He usually never trusted one character trait in his identification, but he always associated Bond with a suit.

For a moment he had thought it was Bond's way of walking, soundless, with a light note of a feline-ish pace, careful and sure, but it couldn't be because the person didn't wear a suit. So it was someone else, someone who was tall, had blonde hair and this kind of walk.

The man had blue eyes, wrinkles and scars all across his face, but Q had no idea who it could be. He saw a face, turned around and then forgot it again - _it could have been anyone._

It could have been any agent, as far as Q was concerned. They had many blonde ones, and they all were tall.

"Can I help you?", Q asked in an attempt to not show that he was facing a stranger or not - _I may know you or not, but it's possible I do, so tell me who you are?_ \- and went back to his computer, deciding that if this man was a security threat, then he would not have let Q live that long.

The man with the blue eyes said nothing, and Q sighed, looking up again. He frowned.

The man had moved, now was closer, only a bit away from Q. Would they both reach out, they could let their hands brush or touch, but he saw no reason to.

"I do not like to repeat questions, so I shall ask another one", Q said, pursing his lips for a moment, "Who are you?"

There was an expression of surprise written across the wrinkles and scars, but it was replaced by a cold, blank one again. Another step taken forward, another step closer towards Q who slowly felt trapped.

Another step.

And another.

Q's back hit the desk and his breath hitched in confusion, eyes wide as he took the face in from closer, trying to remember something, but he couldn't. He was staring at the face of a stranger, who had an advantage or two over Q. He had muscles, and probably knew who Q was.

The man leant down, and his lips brushed Q's, and the moment his scent rose into Q's nostrils, Q realised that...

...he still had no idea who it was. It was a female scent, perfume made for women not for men, lingering on his skin like he had been in contact with someone who had it on but not himself, it smelled of roses and tulpies, but was nothing alike the ones Q had memorised.

It wasn't Eve's, nor the late M's, and not Claire's, nor Alexandria's, and Q found himself being confused about this all.

Was this an enemy? Why not killing him, then, and why not knocking him out if he was needed for something? Why kissing him? And why wrapping his arms around Q's waist, rough, calloused skin against the small of Q's back, his shirt having slipped up slightly...

Rough, calloused hands.

Blonde hair.

Q blinked, looking into the eyes of the man.

"Bond?"

The man didn't let go of him like Q expected him to, but instead stepped closer, their chests pressed together, and his breath brushing Q's cheek as he leant forward, lips against Q's ear.

"Yes."

It was a deep, echoing voice, lingering in his mind and having been in there for as long as they knew each other. It was Bond, there was no doubt, but why didn't he wear a suit? Why not his usual cologne?

"Why aren't you wearing a suit today?"

Bond chuckled in a low noise, and leant backwards again, his eyes sparkling. _Blue_ , Q thought repeating it over and over again, _blue. Blue. Blueblueblueblueblueblue._

"I just came back from medical. They did not give me a suit to replace the one torn by some dogs I was fighting against in India", the elder said, thumb drawing circles and pattern on Q's back, "What is it called?"

"Prosopagnosia."

"Face-blindness", Bond stated, and as Q nodded, he titled his head in thoughts, "And how do you know who I am if not by my face?"

_I know your smell. I know how you walk, how you place each step. I know how you look like from afar, and when you sit on my desk, or when you walk, and I know how your voice sounds. I know how you pronounce words, different than others here. I know your hair, your cologne, and you wear suits. I know you because I want to know you, and I know you have blue eyes, even if it's only for a moment._

"I just do."

Q tiptoed, pressing his lips on Bond's, and the elder kissed back.


End file.
